The True Extent of U.S. Unemployment

Whether official unemployment numbers are low (below 5%) or high (above 10%), they are dwarfed by chronic, hidden mass joblessness, which is generally an order of magnitude higher than official unemployment.

Those officially counted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics as unemployed vary between troughs of 5 or 6 million when unemployment is historically low, and peaks of 15 or 20 million in a crisis like the Great Recession or the pandemic when unemployment is historically high.  But meanwhile, for many decades 40% of adults – some 100 million Americans – don’t have jobs.  Some are retired, some can’t or choose not to work. But a majority of them, an estimated 80-85 million, would choose to work given reasonable job opportunity, which they lack.

Long before the Great Recession or covid-19, the U.S. labor market suffered and continues to suffer from hidden, unofficial mass joblessness many times worse than peak official unemployment in a crisis, as the chart below shows.

For a more detailed snapshot of the full extent of joblessness in America before the pandemic, see this fact sheet.